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The Labadie Booklets 



"THE POOR DEVIL" 

A MEMORY OF 
ROBERT REITZEL 



DETROIT 
THE LABADIE SHOP 
1909 



mm 
Meyer, Oksstafc 



Gift 

H. L. Mencken. 

SEP 2 1928. 



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Written by John Hubert 
Greusel, and reprinted 
into this Booklet from 
The Detroit News- Trib- 
une of Sept. z6, igoo. 



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SEPTEMBER, 1900, saw the end 
of a famous Detroit newspaper, known 
as " Der Arme Teufel," a little German 
weekly periodical founded by Robert 
Reitzel. The paper was obliged to sus- 
pend publication because of a lack of sup- 
port. Reitzel carried it on successfully for 
fifteen years; and for the past three years, 
since his death, "The Poor Devil " had 
been in capable editorial hands. But 
people wanted Reitzel. 

A review of the rise, 
growth and decline of this unique little 
periodical must, in effect, be an account of 
Reitzel's own peculiarities. Reitzel's 
battle-cry was " Death to hypocrisy! " 
He was the foe of custom and convention- 
ality. Strong in his personal prejudices 
and idiosyncrasies, he refused to bow to 
the spirit of the times. He insisted that 
the world come to him. He had many 
noble ideas, but he joined with no man in 
their indorsement. All his life he lashed 
men for lack of justice, and never shaded 
or inclined. 

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As a business man he was gro- 
tesque. His paper went to England, 
France, Holland, Iceland, China, South 
Africa — in a word, to the ends of the earth. 
United with his amazing mental stubborn- 
ness was a quality sweet and mild, and 
sometimes he dipped his pen in gall and 
wormwood, and again he. wrote with an 
Easter lily. 

Reitzel's "Arrae Teufel " was 
first printed in a little stuffy office on 
Champlain street, near Randolph, Detroit. 
The room was littered with newspaper 
plunder; a few woodcuts were tacked on 
the walls; a batch of old papers were 
stacked about; there was a bookcase in 
mil view. It was a desolate, barren place, 
a mere loft, as it were. 

At one of the tables 
Robert Reitzel, the editer, usually sat 
smoking a long pipe with a huge bowl. 
He was a man of medium size, inclin- 
ing to stoutness. He had a large head, 
broad forehead, small nose, small dark 
eyes, black, luxuriant hair, inclined to 
curl, and, as an odd personal trait, occa- 
sionally sniffed the air by thrusting out his 
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lips slightly as lie wrote rapidly. He gen- 
erally wore a white shirt, but was inclined 
to be negligent in other portions of his 
dress. 

Reitzel was born in Baden, Ger- 
many; his father, a retired schoolmaster, 
living on a pension, resided in Carlsruhe. 
Robert, the only son, was born in 1848. 
He studied theology in one of the German 
universities, and then came to America, 
sojourneying for a time in New York, and 
afterwards in Baltimore, but without at- 
tracting attention. In 1872 he appeared 
in Washington as a preacher for the Ger- 
man reformed church, corner of Sixth and 
N streets. Later he preached for the 
" Free church," as it was called. He 
gradually grew out of the Lutheran theo- 
logical beliefs, began touring the country 
near and far as a lecturer. 

For the last five 
years of his life this German prose-poet 
suffered from a lingering physical affliction 
which kept him chained to his bed, from 
which, in spite of excruciating pains, he 
cheerfully wrote the various articles that 
made "The Poor Devil " a welcome visit- 



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or to highly educated Germans in all parts 
of the world. The subscription list, at the 
hight of prosperity, was about 4,000, at 
$2.50 a year; but many who received the 
paper regularly never paid money, and 
Reitzel, with characteristic magnanimity, 
carried them on, year after year. Kis 
paper was read by people who did not, 
by any means, always agree with the frank 
utterances of the redoubtable editer; but 
the very audacity of his opinions made 
Reitzel's name unique. That he was not 
discovered by English-speaking people 
during his life time is due, it is said, to his 
utter lack of business management, to his 
improvidence, and above all to his indiffer- 
ence to praise or blame. He did not even 
place a file of his little paper in the Public 
Library ; it would be too much like fore- 
thought for Reitzel ; and lack of heed for 
tomorrow was one of his predominating 
traits. 

Those who are fortunate enough to 
have bound copies of the complete " Poor 
Devil " have a work that is likely to com- 
mand an extremely high price. 

As said before, 

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Reitzel started his career as a Lutheran 
minister, but in course of time he came to 
know that his heart was not in the work, 
and, with characteristic honesty, gave it up 
and became a lecturer, traveling all over 
the United States, forming a large 
bodj' of friends, some of whom advanced 
money to help him start his paper while 
others became subscribers. 

It was not long 
before Reitzel, always ungovernable, fell 
away from the very people who had placed 
their means at his disposal. His poetic 
spirit, his bitterness, his ardor in support 
of what he considered just, his implacable 
enmities, his ardent support of honesty, as 
he saw honesty, and his fanatical zeal 
when he had pledged his word, made 
Reitzel a much-misunderstood character. 

There was then no middle course. 
Reitzel was either loved or feared. His 
pecular mental force pleased the coterie to 
which his paper appealed; and yet, singu- 
larly enough, it is doubtful if ever an issue 
of " The Poor Devil " was given to whose 

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vitriolic utterances many of the subscribers 
did not take issue. Yet they bought and 
read the paper. They were, in effect, 
buying Reitzel's mental ugliness and his 
idealism, his flambuoyant youth, his effer- 
vescence, his loyalty to friends, his desper- 
ation against his enemies. 

In his first issue 
Reitzel gave his literary program. He 
begins with a poem, whose sentiments are 
said to be very Reitzelesque. The German 
versification has that smoothness charac- 
teristic of all this man's best work; and, 
without an attempt at a poetical transla- 
tion, the ideas set in English read as fol- 
lows: 

FOR ENEMY AND FRIEND. 

Keep away from me, you hypocritic toads! 
Keep away from me, who alway smile and 
joke! 

Away whom only foul vulgarity pleases — 
You cringers and flatterers, away! 

I do not love the ever-cautious wise; 
Nor those who always ride the steeds of 
pathos! 

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Nor those who always cry of times so hard, 
Nor those who in the self-same circle swing. 

I love those joyous, happy fellows 
Who gather where the full cup beckons, 
And love to sink on beauty's bosom — 
And also those who hear the trumpet's 
blare! 

Who understand our time's most forceful 
striving 

And carry in their hearts the spring of in- 
dignation; 

Who help to fight sweet Liberty's battle — 
And give their hearts' blood as a sacrifice! 

Continuing, Reitzel, in a- somewhat 
elaborate introduction, tells anecdotes of 
Lessing, Schiller, Feierbach and others, 
showing that, after all is said of their ex- 
alted station, they were merely poor devils 
in the end. Thus Feierbach 's life is char- 
acterized by a philosophic friend, and 
when Schiller was born his uncle is said to 
have exclaimed with a sigh: "Another 
poor devil born into this world!" Then, 
in a thoroughly Reitzelesque style, the 
editer, disclaiming any such splendid tal- 

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ents, goes on to tell of a poor Norwegian 
soldier of fortune who, once upon a time 
in Switzerland, lost that which men hold 
dearest, his wife and home. And after 
that it was observed that he was always 
fighting on humanity's battlegrounds. In 
Baden, in 1848, with the Italian states 
against the pope, on the red fields of the 
American civil war — wherever freedom's 
flag was unfurled — there was he found. 
Those who knew and loved the old soldier 
of fortune gave him bread, and with peace 
and joyous heart, scarce knowing the sad- 
ness of life, he strolled slowly from town to 
town, and at night, using his coat for a 
pillow, he rested at the edge of the. road, 
and looking up at the peaceful stars, felt a 
happiness no human tongue could sound. 
He realized that he was a part of the 
great plan of nature. "And so," says 
Reitzel, "as the old soldier fought for free- 
dom, that, too, is my mission in my little 
paper, which henceforth is to be known 
as "The Poor Devil." 

Reitzel wasalw T ays absolutely ungovern- 

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able, and consequently the business man- 
agement of his paper did not exist at all. 
He refused to receive his best advertiser's 
card on one occasion, simply because the 
advertiser was overheard expressing some 
heretical opinion. It is said that Reitzel 
never solicited an advertisement in his life. 
When funds ran low a notice, usually 
couched in comical style, would appear in 
" The Poor Devil," calling on those in 
arrears; and to make sure that the request 
was not to be construed as a begging plan, 
Reitzel made it clear that his words were 
intended only for those able to pay. There 
were many persons on his lists from whom 
he never expected money. Thus, obtain- 
ing cash enough to supply the immediate 
needs of those about him, Reitzel continued 
his paper with a free hand and after his 
own good fashion of a knight-errant, hit- 
ting a head wherever one popped up. 

This man was no respecter of persons, 
and yet there was that about him that be - 
spoke the tenderness and the sincerity of a 
child. If anyone told him that a certain 



passage was beautifully turned, he stroked 
his chin and said "Ugh, ugh;" and after 
that the attacks of ail the newspapers in 
the country were indifferent to him, be- 
cause one person had understood him 
aright. 

His writings at best have the 
classic touch, the purity of expression that 
marks the greatest German prose masters. 
Reitzel's special study was Heinrich Heine, 
whom he resembled in many ways. His 
life, like Heine's, consisted of a long strug- 
gle against hypocrisy; his defiance of the 
conventions of life was similar to Heine's; 
his joy in greeting friends, in drinking 
wine, his love of life in its merriest phases, 
was equal to that of the great Heine; and, 
finally, Reitzel's death was similar to that 
of the German poet, even in its very form, 
for each man came to the last stretched 
for months at a time on a bed of suffering, 
thru spinal trouble, and thus stricken unto 
death, like a prisoner in a cell, waiting to 
be taken to the scaffold, each wrote much 
beautiful prose and poetry between mo- 
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mentary relief from great mental and 
physical pain. 

Reitzel resembled Brann, 
the Iconoclast, perhaps, so far as his bold- 
ness, but unlike Brann, Reitzel' s work was 
not disfigured by apostleship of the purely 
sexual, in an objectionable sense; and to 
an extent " The Poor Devil " had an affin- 
ity in the little "Philistine," the East 
Aurora publication. He wrote absolutely 
what he believed truth and nothing but 
the truth. Once a prominent Parisian 
publication asked him for an article on the 
tendencies in American newspapers, and 
urged that he name his own price, to 
which Reitzel responded with considerable 
disdain that "price" was a matter of in- 
difference to him, that he wrote only for 
his own paper, and that, if there happened 
to be anything in "The Poor Devil " that 
fitted the proposed suggestion, the Paris- 
ian editer was welcome to use it without 
cost. 

Reitzel, intensely erratic in all things, 
lived a life of total independence, upon 
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which he prided himself as the basis of all 
his philosophic strength. He did what he 
pleased, and that ended his personal res- 
ponsibility. Occasionally numbers of "The 
Poor Devil " would appear containing 
scarcely a scratch of his pen, but filled up 
with letters, clippings and miscellany. He 
facetiously called these "champagne 
numbers," and they were issued whenever 
he was away enjoying himself, drinking. 
At such times he neither wrote nor thought 
of writing, nor did he give a snap for his 
paper or its subscribers. His friends and 
enemies soon learned to expect these 
whimsical moods and passed them by as a 
joke. 

Such was the erratic Reitzel. 

While 

he was such a poor manager, in a com- 
mercial sense, this fierce, intractable man, 
in some ways, had sympathies as broad as 
humanity. There was a standing notice 
in his paper to the effect that "any fellows 
tramping thru the country and not know- 
ing where to get a bite to e at or a bed 
should come to the office of 'The Poor 
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Devil,' in Detroit." The result of such 
magnanimity may readily be imagined. 

They say that Reitzel, from his sick bed, 
where he was forced to gasp in pain for 
the last five years of his life, sometimes, 
when well enough to sit up, was able to 
see a little meadow, at the corner of the 
street; and here his sensitive, poetic nature 
beheld beauty as the seasons came and 
went. Spring brought back the delicate 
green grasses, summer clothed the little 
meadow in deep emerald, which in turn 
in the fall of the year gradually faded into 
the gloom that foreshadows the long, sad 
winter, when the snow lays deep and level 
upon the frozen ground. Propped up in 
bed, Reitzel, the poet-painter, discovered 
here more glimpses of Nature's loveliness 
in this little meadow than many a person 
sees on a splendid foreign tour, from the 
window of a parlor car, with every luxury 
at hand, as the train speeds thru the most 
enchanting scenic backgrounds in the 
world. 

Reitzel' s paper is without an in- 
dex, and as "The Poor Devil" was pub- 
lished for fifteen years, the confusion in- 

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volved in discovering a former extract is 
well nigh disastrous. 

His biography of 
Shakespeare— only a fragment — is one of 
the most beautiful things in the German 
language. Shakespeare was one of Reit- 
zel's hero-men. So was Jesus Christ, and 
Reitzel was a free thinker. But he 
admired Christ's teachings. 

Such a paper, 

such an individual force, must necessarily 
pass with the death of the editor. Every 
effort was made to find a successor who 
would follow the old lines; and Martin 
Drescher is declared by his friends to have 
been capable in every way; but it was 
Reitzel that the friends of " Der Arme 
Teufel " had been wont to buy. Now 
that he was no -more no other editor could 
possibly take his place. And now it is all 
merely a memory. 

Reitzel' s ashes repose 
in an urn in the columborium of the 
Detroit crematory. 



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REITZEL 

BY JO LABADIE 

In a little dingy workshop, 

Past which dull toilers hied, 
A worker dreamed and pounded 
As his products multiplied; 
From his great heart came arolling 
Songs freedom sweet extolling. 

He toiled amaking ordnance 

In his arsenal of thought 
To use against the despots 

For the havoc they had wrought 
Among the lowly legions 
In the ever-plodding regions. 

He fashioned arms for freedom 

That would slay the tyrant foe, 
That would fill the heart with battle 
Of the dull, ignoble low, 
That would make invaders tremble, 
That would shame who would dissemble. 

He sent these piercing missiles 
These dum-dum bullet-words, 

Where they did the gravest damage 
To false leaders of the herds, 



To the conscienceless despoilers, 
And the wooden-headed toilers. 

He died in the heat of battle, 

Wounded sorely in the fight, 
'Mid the conflict's roar and rattle 
For Liberty and Right; 
'Mid the love of friends expired, 
All his comrades true inspired. 



Photomount I 
Pamphlet 

Binder < j 

Gaylord Bros. 3 
Makers 

Syracuse, N. Y. j 

PAT. JAN 21, 1908 1 



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